I love my job, but then I guess I was lucky. A fellow student in my CS course happened to mention the gov't contract he was working on needed 4 entry level computer operators. I sent my resume that night via email and was hired the next day for a different company (TRW vice Veridian), same contract.
In less than a year I have been promoted to a working supervisor and lead tech of a system. As long as it is up when someone needs it, my time is pretty much free to do whatever I went, and I can qualify most of my time at work as "professional development." On any given day, I could be found playing with shell scripts, helping the sysads install new systems, learning a Perl book, setting up a network, ssh to my home system, or any number of things. I can even do my programming homework as long as we are not too busy with a project. They also pay 100% of my tuition and books. In short, right now there is no other place I would rather work. They pay slightly below the area average, but being a former Marine with no degree, I am not complaining.
There are a number of "fun" palces to work out there, you just have to figure out your definition of fun and go find it.
I am in my junior year of my CS degree after 7 years in the USMC. My first programming course was in C++, and within a week or two I was able to write simple programs that worked, and it did not require that many concepts to be learned. I opened up a first semester Java book for the hell of it, and could not believe how much you had to do to know to write a simple Java program. C++ has the advantage of allowing you to use multiple paradigms, whereas someone else stated, Java throws OOP right up front. The majority of applications that are developed where I work (Modeling & Simulation) are written in C/C++ and Simscript, with only one client application written in Java. Once I am proficient in C/C++ and shell/Perl scripting, I will tackle something like Java.
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I love my job, but then I guess I was lucky. A fellow student in my CS course happened to mention the gov't contract he was working on needed 4 entry level computer operators. I sent my resume that night via email and was hired the next day for a different company (TRW vice Veridian), same contract.
In less than a year I have been promoted to a working supervisor and lead tech of a system. As long as it is up when someone needs it, my time is pretty much free to do whatever I went, and I can qualify most of my time at work as "professional development." On any given day, I could be found playing with shell scripts, helping the sysads install new systems, learning a Perl book, setting up a network, ssh to my home system, or any number of things. I can even do my programming homework as long as we are not too busy with a project. They also pay 100% of my tuition and books. In short, right now there is no other place I would rather work. They pay slightly below the area average, but being a former Marine with no degree, I am not complaining.
There are a number of "fun" palces to work out there, you just have to figure out your definition of fun and go find it.
I am in my junior year of my CS degree after 7 years in the USMC. My first programming course was in C++, and within a week or two I was able to write simple programs that worked, and it did not require that many concepts to be learned. I opened up a first semester Java book for the hell of it, and could not believe how much you had to do to know to write a simple Java program. C++ has the advantage of allowing you to use multiple paradigms, whereas someone else stated, Java throws OOP right up front. The majority of applications that are developed where I work (Modeling & Simulation) are written in C/C++ and Simscript, with only one client application written in Java. Once I am proficient in C/C++ and shell/Perl scripting, I will tackle something like Java.